Gayle & Chicory Flower Essence
By Stephanie Rae Wattley, 2021 Graduate
CHICORY - Cichlorium intybus
Positive qualities: Selfless love given freely, respecting the freedom and individuality of others; emotional containment
Patterns of imbalance: Possessive or manipulative behaviors disguised as love, demanding, or emotionally needy; getting attention through negative behavior; self-centeredness
Gayle is a secondary character on one of my favorite shows, Bob’s Burgers. The main character of the show is Bob Belcher, the frustrated family man whose passion is making burgers. Bob’s wife, Linda Belcher, is a fierce mama bear who loves her kids and finds joy in all of their strange adventures. Gayle is Linda’s sister. Gayle is the unemployed, cat-loving, 42-year-old sister/sister-in-law/aunt that the main characters find irritating, weird and often unbearable. Her neediness and attention-seeking antics often get in the way of the other characters’ lives and create the kind of over-the-top situations that make for comedic gold on the quirky primetime cartoon comedy.
Gayle seems to be tolerated by the other characters on the show (her family) because she seems to have a hold over her sister Linda, who often enables Gayle despite her behaviors. Linda often asks the other characters to tolerate Gayle because of Gayle’s emotional instability.
In season 6, there’s an entire episode dedicated to Gayle called “Gayle Making Bob Sled”. By season 6, the audience and all the characters on the show are well aware that Bob LOVES Thanksgiving. For Bob, Thanksgiving combines his two favorite things; food and family. However, this Thanksgiving themed-episode takes a turn when we learn that Gayle has allegedly “sprained her ankle salsa dancing and slipping on salsa”. Gayle begs her sister to pick her up during a snowstorm because she doesn’t want to drive due to her sprain, her sister agrees, but Bob offers to go instead since it’s revealed that Linda drives very poorly in the snow.
After tearing himself away from cooking his beloved Thanksgiving dinner and being forced to leave the Turkey prep to his wife and kids (who he finds incompetent in the kitchen), Bob heads out to pick up his annoying sister-in-law Gayle.
When Bob arrives at Gayle’s house he finds Gayle naked on the floor in a towel although he warned her he was coming in. Gayle claims she fell and needs help getting up. After a series of frustratingly, time-consuming “Gayle moments”, so much time has passed between Bob leaving to pick Gayle up and their actual departure from her apartment (they were supposed to head back to Bob’s house for Thanksgiving dinner) that Bob’s car gets snowed in.
Gayle begs Bob to drag her, her cat and a bowl of salad, dozens of blocks to his house on a sled in 4 feet of snow. Gayle is aware that Bob is trying to mind time, but she always seems to have needs that take precedence over the other characters desires. After a series of mishaps related to Gayle’s stubbornness, (including Bob falling ten feet from a tree trying to save the cat she insisted on bringing with her, despite the fact that Bob is allergic to cats) Bob learns that Gayle can walk (and drive) and that she’s been faking an injury for attention.
About Gayle, Linda says, “she fakes injuries when she’s sad or happy or bored or when she’s injured”.
When Bob learns that he’s been lied to, he calls his wife Linda, (who he tasked with cooking the turkey) he learns that his beloved Turkey is doomed and that Linda is fully aware that Gayle is capable of these grand lies and manipulative behaviors. About Gayle, Linda says, “she fakes injuries when she’s sad or happy or bored or when she’s injured”.
Throughout the series we see various examples of Linda sharing her resources, support and family with Gayle out of a sense of responsibility for her because of Gayle’s self-proclaimed emotional fragility. We’ve seen Gayle manipulate Linda many times to get her way. Linda feels that because she has such a happy life, and because she’s more stable, she should put up with Gayle’s attention-seeking behaviors.
In the series, we often see Gayle throwing herself on the ground in crocodile tears or bursting onto a scene dramatically with an over-emotional response to some seemingly minute issue in her life. Gayle’s emotions and needs can dominate conversations and distract the entire family from their lives. Her behaviors dismiss the needs of the other members of her family and spill out inappropriately. Gayle’s family members often have to lie to her to subdue her overreactions. The other characters realize that Gayle is emotionally unstable and often feel they have to go along with her whims and quirks or make concessions so that she doesn’t cause a manipulative scene.
Throughout the series, we learn a lot about Gayle’s life. Gayle doesn’t have a lot of money but definitely buys what she wants with the little she does have. Gayle doesn’t work and is financially irresponsible; she once bought“600 dollars worth of essential oils” on her credit card to fit in, yet she borrows thousands of dollars from Bob and Linda who struggle financially themselves. There’s an episode where Bob finds out that Gayle has been borrowing a lot of money from Linda and tries to help Gayle become financially independent but she sabotages the opportunity, she’s completely comfortable leaning on her sister for money even for things that are not necessities.
Gayle is the quintessential imbalanced Chicory personality that could use love and support. Instead of participating in a healthy give-and-take of loving energy, she makes unreasonable demands of her family and friends. Gayle needs constant emotional reinforcement and asks for so much that dealing with her feels like a burden on the other characters. The other characters often refer to her jokingly because they know her behavior is outlandish.
If Gayle were to use Chicory...she would respect others’ needs and engage lovingly- without the need to demand negative attention through manipulation, dysfunctional behavior, and extreme emotional responses…
Image references
1. http://ilovehomoeopathy.com/chicory-the-motherliness-flower/
2. tvline.com
3. Timesunion.com
4. https://bobs-burgers.fandom.com/wiki/Gayle
5. fengshuidana.com
Archetypal Essays are portfolio assignments created during the Sacred Geometry & Formula Making Intensive
